The Irish team leading European research in molecular communications is set to launch CIRCLE, an EU-wide molecular communications network, at ACM NANOCOM tomorrow (22 September).

Through CIRCLE – a €500,000 project sponsored under Horizon 2020 – key researchers across Ireland, the UK, Spain, Belgium, Turkey, Finland, Italy and the Netherlands will collaborate on research initiatives such as shrinking cancerous tumours and detecting threats to crop yields.

CIRCLE will offer a support infrastructure for the coordination of this molecular communications research, ensuring that research teams across Europe work together to get the best results possible.

In the emerging field of molecular communications, said CIRCLE coordinator Dr Alan Davy of TSSG, “the challenge at this time lies in the fact that, without a clear and coordinated research agenda for the community, advances in this highly disruptive technological space may be some 50 years away”.

According to a press release from the team behind CIRCLE, the field of molecular communications seeks to understand and use biological phenomenon on the molecular level – such as inter-cell communication, bacterial DNA transfer, and neuronal signalling – to design and build communications infrastructures that can coordinate complex operations within biological systems like the human body.

Molecular communications draws on a number of disciplines, from ICT to biology and medicine.

CIRCLE will bring together the finest minds across Europe in these areas, enabling a level of study that would not otherwise be possible.

It is hoped that the project will lead to advancements in high-precision drug delivery and nano-scale medical procedures.

CIRCLE, said Davy, will “lay the foundations for the development of disruptive applications within the next 20 years. CIRCLE is a critical first step along this path”.